Farewell Michael Jackson

A lot has been written and said about Michael Jackson since his untimely death at 50 years of age of Friday June 26th, the mainstream media covering the singer’s career and life from top to bottom.

Acknowledgement of his music and industry achievements (750 million records worldwide, 13 #1 singles, 13 Grammy Awards) has been well documented, as has his impact on collective consciousness via pop culture. Even a surprisingly sensitive Germaine Greer write in The Guardian of Jackon’s astounding influence on modern dance, “the surprise is not that we have lost him, but that we ever had him at all.”

Thriller was a turning point in popular music, and this influential record blared from kids’ bedrooms on every street in the world, including yours. If you didn’t own it, or Bad, or Dangerous, then someone in your family did. And those of you who don’t already have them appear to be snapping them up in record numbers now – wait for this week’s charts.

While few of us could ever really relate on a human level to Michael Jackson, his early death is a cultural milestone. And when the media’s reporting inevitably gets too much, and you’re about to automatically switch back to your standard cynical mindset, just be glad that for perhaps the only time in your life, everyone got it right.